Another writer reports that Young, when he was in the agony of composition, was in the habit of shutting up his windows and lighting his lamps and candles, even when the sun was in full blaze outside. And it is added that skulls and bones and instruments of death were among the ornaments of his study. All this may not imply the possession in any great degree of the quality of common sense, but it was, perhaps, rather a fitting preparation for the composition, in later years, of "The Night Thoughts On Life, Death, and Immortality, On Time, Death, and Friendship."
Sydney Smith went up from Winchester in 1789. They always "go up" to Oxford, and they invariably "go down," when they are not "sent down," to any point of the compass, be it in the neighborhood of Edinburgh, Rome, or Greenland's Icy Mountains. So Sydney Smith "went up" to New College when he was in his eighteenth year; but it seems, notwithstanding his subsequent wonderful wit and brilliancy of conversation, that he made no particular impression upon his tutors and fellow-students at Oxford, either in the College or out of it.
His daughter, and biographer, Lady Holland, writes: "New College was then chiefly renowned for the quantity of port wine consumed by its Fellows; but the very slender income allowed Syd-
